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Strike Against the Charter Movement: Newark elects Baraka

Newark elects Ras Baraka as mayor. Baraka is a former public high school principal, and son of the late poet Amiri Baraka (who came out to support the student walkout against racially segregated leveling at my alma mater, Columbia High School, in 2006). His opponent, Shavar Jeffries, sat on the school board, founded a charter school, and was supported by the charter lobby. From the Star Ledger:

A major focal point of the election was the debate over the schools and state-appointed Superintendent Cami Anderson’s controversial “One Newark” school reorganization plan — which calls for the relocation and consolidation of one-quarter of the city’s schools and turning over some neighborhood schools to charter operators.

Baraka was a fierce opponent of the plan, which would have involved shutting down schools and moving kids all around the city. The equivalent plan in Chicago, Renaissance 2010, has been disastrous, and disproportionately so for black students. Jeffries supported “One Newark,” along with our glorious governor.

Though Jeffries raised nearly double as much money as Baraka ($1.7mil vs. $945k), Baraka won with 54% of the vote. Though I haven’t been following this election as closely as I would have liked, seems like a significant strike against the school privatization movement in NJ.

Do you see what is going on here? The IMF’s bailout is not marked for Ukrainian social services or any other benefit to the citizenry. All that is about to be taken away, in the neoliberal style. The bailout money goes to Kiev and back out again to the Western financial institutions holding Ukrainian debt. In effect, debt held by private-sector creditors is transferred to the IMF, which uses it to leverage Ukraine into a free-market model via its standard conditionality: No austerity, no dough.

Must read piece by Mychal Denzel Smith and Jesse Myerson in The Nation, featuring both sober historical analysis and concrete proposals to organize around (Job & Income Guarantee, Land Value Tax, and Baby Bonds):

Before laying out our proposals, we should clarify why, historically, eliminating racism requires an economic program. America’s story is one of economic exploitation driving the creation and maintenance of racism over time. The inception of our country’s economic system condemned black people to an underclass for a practical rather than bigoted reason: the exploitation of African labor. Imported Africans were prevented by customs and language barriers from entering into contracts, and unlike the indigenous population, their lack of familiarity with the terrain prevented them from running away from their slavers. To morally justify an economy dependent on oppression, in a nation newly founded on the rights of men to freedom, it was necessary to socially construct a biological fiction called race, one that deemed some people subhuman, mere property.